To Flourish
by Takebuo Ishimatsu
Summary: Tamaki's an idiot, but Kaoru seems to like him anyway. Hikaru, not so much. Tamaki/Kaoru with non-incest jealous!Hikaru. Written for arizonaicerose for Help Pakistan. 2nd in a 3-part series.


**Title: **To Flourish

**Author: **Takebuo Ishimatsu

**Pairing(s): **Tamaki/Kaoru

**Summary: **Tamaki's an idiot, but Kaoru seems to like him anyway. Hikaru, not so much. Tamaki/Kaoru with non-incest jealous!Hikaru. Written for arizonaicerose for Help_Pakistan. 2nd in a 3-part series.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Ouran.

**AN:** As stated in the summary, this fic was written for arizonaicerose, who won my offer in the first round of Help_Pakistan. This is the second idea I came up with for the request – I wanted jealous/big brother!Hikaru with Kaoru & Tamaki.

**Warning about rating: **This story is rated low, but it is part of a series. I'm giving you a head's up that the third part of the trilogy will be NC-17

He had a soft smile on his face. A true, genuinely happy smile. Not one filled with barely concealed malice, a smirk directed towards some unfortunate girl they'd just made cry. Not one of amusement, letting their toy know they'd just gotten the better of him or her. Not even just a plain one for Hikaru.

It was a I'm-happy-to-be-with-you smile. For _him_.

Hikaru's face darkened, and he squeezed the pencil between his fingers until his hand started to hurt and he was in risk of breaking the poor thing. Since when did that _idiot_ deserve even a passing glance from his brother? It was Hikaru's job to make him happy. Or, at the very least, find someone suitable to make him happy in his place. Someone that had not spent almost a year pretending to be his girlfriend's "Daddy."

"If you break that, you're buying me a new one," came the bland comment from the other side of the table.

He glanced towards Haruhi before releasing his death grip on the small mechanical device.

"Sorry. Though, I could buy you a new one anyway, you know," he responded.

The girl just shrugged, "I like this one."

He nodded and didn't say anything. It was an old argument: he had enough money to buy a pencil for every single person in Japan and then some, but she wouldn't take anything that would make her seem a "charity case." Poor people were so weird.

"Stop staring at them, you're going to make Kaoru uncomfortable," she demanded.

"I'm not bothering him," he hissed back, even though they both knew it was a dirty lie. He'd been around his brother long enough to at least realize when he was purposefully avoiding glancing his direction. But, what else was he supposed to do? He was the big brother. He was supposed to protect him from people like Tamaki, who probably wanted to deflower him and didn't even know it. Yet.

"You're reacting to Tamaki just like you do with Arai."

He flushed at the implication. "I'm not jealous, if that's what you're saying. I'm watching out for him."

"Well, it's your fault anyway that their together in the first place. If you hadn't invited me along to your study date, Kaoru probably wouldn't have invited Tamaki. It's only fair that he gets his own person to hang out with too," Haruhi replied bluntly.

Hikaru resisted the urge to bang his head into the table; he really had to teach her to control her unknowingly harsh tongue if she was ever going to go to any social functions with him. (Not that he wouldn't like seeing the shocked faces, or anything. It just wasn't as much fun when you knew the other wasn't doing it on purpose.)

"He knows he could have just told me he didn't want you to come and I would have revoked the invitation," he answered honestly.

"Perhaps Kaoru isn't the type to do that. Like I said, you're 10% more ornery than he is."

He blinked. "What does that mean? You think it would be rude to choose Kaoru over you? Everyone knows I love him best."

Haruhi sighed and went back to her homework, muttering something along the line of "And people think I'm blunt."

What had he said?

TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI

Kaoru breathed a sigh of relief as he finally felt his twin's gaze drift back to his work. Of course, he'd known what was going to happen once he made his interest in hanging out with Tamaki known, and so he wasn't surprised or anything. Just kind of annoyed, with the worst part being that his table companion didn't even notice. Nor had he noticed any other time in the past three weeks that they'd become closer. Kaoru resisted the urge to sigh.

"I'm bored, Kaoru," Tamaki whined.

"We have to finish our homework before we do anything or else it probably won't get done at all." And then, knowing his luck, the Superintendent would drag him into his office and give him a stern talking-to for making his son flunk out of school.

"But I already did," he whined again.

Kaoru turned his gaze down towards the other's paper, his eyes widening slightly upon realizing he really was done. They'd started at the same time and Tamaki's work was harder. How the hell had he finished to fast?

He frowned down at his own work, his paper only half-ways done.

"Maybe you should go see Kyoya, and I'll finish this with them. We're all in the same class, and we can work together."

"Mother is angry with me," Tamaki whispered. He glanced around, as if searching for the glasses-wearer, before continuing, "I think he's upset that I didn't play him his favorite song the other day."

Kaoru felt that it was more because Tamaki had re-ignited some old fire in the cool boy when he'd mentioned going to Hokkaido with him sometime, but only after he was done studying for the test. Breaking into his house in the middle of the night (how had he done that, anyway?) and deciding then was a good time to ask his forgiveness via a loud, lively piano song probably had something to do with it as well.

Kaoru just "hmmed" in response.

"I know! I'll help you with your work and then we can go play together!" he said, pulling Kaoru's paper towards him.

The image of the blond in the bondage outfit he'd found suddenly popped into his head at the word "play" and he flushed. Maybe he should have let the other boy try it on?

"Oh, you did this one wrong, Kaoru. See, the tangent of..." Kaoru drowned his voice out, instead focusing on all of the little notes he was writing and things that were being crossed out.

Huh, who knew an idiot could be so smart?

TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI

Tamaki made some grand gesture with his rapidly moving hands, motioning out some idiotic scheme that was most likely against all laws of nature and logic.

Kaoru frowned and shook his head but didn't stop the blond from grabbing his hand and dragging him off to Lord knows where.

Hikaru glared and gripped his binoculars harshly, once again thankful that he'd opted for the ones with the high-impact outer shell that was meant to save them if dropped on a hike. Or from being blown up by the sheer power of his _rage_.

How dare he just abduct his brother after school without asking his permission first? (Not that he would have given it anyway.)

"Stalker," a bland voice said behind him as hands suddenly gripped his shoulders. And, well, to put it simply, Hikaru _freaked_ and jumped forwards, managing to fall flat on his face in his attempt to escape his attacker.

"Am I really that scary?" Haruhi said with an impish smile, folding her arms in what could only be described as a self-satisfied way. Really, she was spending _way_ too much time with him, he decided right then and there. If he didn't watch out, his innocently cynical love would be a full-blown terror. She'd be the one _making_ the cookies for the dark side.

He hopped to his feet with a half-hearted glare. "It's more like protective detail. Tamaki might try something when big brother's not around."

She snorted in a very un-ladylike manner, "It's bad enough that you glare at him during all of our study sessions and mock everything he says in the club. You should at least let Kaoru have some privacy if he wants to go out alone with him."

Hikaru frowned. If Tamaki didn't want to be glared at, he shouldn't come to their study sessions, simple as that. It wasn't as if he was even invited; ever since his brother had asked him to come along that one day last week, he'd taken to showing up without notice. Worst of all, he was apparently good at his school work, if nothing else (Hikaru imagined he kind of had to be, being the Superintendent's son and all) and so he couldn't kick him out on the pretense that he was causing Kaoru trouble.

"Maybe he didn't want to go out with him. You know how that idiot is; he probably just grabbed him and forced him into his car."

Haruhi couldn't argue with that, so instead she sighed and replied with, "While I'm still not certain about your weird twin sleeping-together thing, it's fairly obvious that at least Mr. Prince likes ladies, so you don't need to be so protective of Kaoru. They're just friends." He opened his mouth to point out that everyone (besides him, of course) had always thought Kaoru liked ladies too but she quickly cut him off, "_And_, even if he didn't, it's not like he'd even know what to do."

"You can't be certain of what goes on in that head of his. With some of the strange mutterings he has sometimes, I swear he's fantasizing about naughty things right there in front of us!"

It was only half a lie, considering Tamaki had gotten pretty weird at times when he was still hung up on his "daughter." Though, if Hikaru was honest with himself, he knew he was more worried about Tamaki finally catching onto his brother's "yaoi" vibes that he'd been giving off lately.

He'd known since they were little that the one absolute difference between them was that Kaoru liked boys and he liked girls. He'd never thought much of it until Kaoru had taken to talking about the other boy in the past few weeks the same way he'd complained about him talking about Haruhi. And, he always seemed to opt to be with the other when he couldn't be with Hikaru.

Sometimes he opted to be with him even when he could be with Hikaru.

It's not that he wanted his brother to be alone, pinning away for him to return from his date with Haruhi, or anything like that. It's just...couldn't he have picked Honey instead or something? At least then he wouldn't have to worry about all of the side glances his brother kept sending the blond's way whenever he thought no one was looking.

Seeing that her talking wasn't working, Haruhi just rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the upper arm and started pulling him along the street like an errant child, paying no bit of attention to his noisy protests or the looks they were generating.

TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI

Kaoru pretended not to notice when he saw his brother finally leaving, obviously not of his own will, just as he'd pretended not to notice when he'd arrived. Goodness, even he and the others had backed off on _their_ first date after a while, whereas Hikaru had been following them for, well, weeks.

Ever since the "dress up" day, Tamaki had decided he was his new best friend, much to Kyoya's obvious relief and wicked amusement. The blond had taken to forcing the redhead into going with him all over the city on wild errands to fulfill even wilder ideas. (And, well, he might have encouraged that by sometimes asking the blond along on _his_ wild errands.)

As a general rule, his older brother had taken to inviting himself along, only to switch to not-very-stealthy following when Haruhi had told him to give them some space. He supposed he should have seen it coming.

Though, how could he have? He'd been bored one day and had decided he needed someone else to hang out with for a single afternoon. And he'd picked Tamaki, of all people, because everyone else was busy and/or had way too much sugar in their system to be safe. How was he to know it would turn out so...nice?

_By the way, about your strategy for yesterday's date, did you ever consider the possibility that it might have gone too well, and fostered feelings of love?_

Kaoru sighed, not knowing if he should be deeply moved or wholly disheartened to realize he and his brother even fell in love identically.

He blamed it on the inclusiveness of their "previous life." Which really wasn't all that better of a thought since then he realized that he might have fallen for anyone, and he could very well be on an unofficial date with _Honey_ right then if he'd chosen wrong that day.

He wouldn't have had any teeth left by the end of the year! Then how would they play the "Which one is Hikaru game?" They'd have to keep their mouths shut and thus would have to mime the question and the fangirls would probably get it all wrong and think they were jerking each other off through the air. And then they'd pounce.

...Wow, he really was spending too much time with Tamaki, if this was the train of thought he had nowadays.

"Kaoru! He's following us!" the blond whispered, jumping behind the other.

He rolled his eyes. Leave it to Tamaki to finally notice their long-time silent companion just as the other was leaving.

"Hurry, into the crowd before he deflowers us!" he said frantically, starting to push the redhead towards a busy clothing store.

Huh?

Kaoru's eyes roamed the street just as he was passing through the doorway, his gaze finally landing on Ouran's head groundskeeper. His lips twitched of their own accord. Tamaki was such an idiot.

Cute. But still an idiot.

TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI

Hikaru glared daggers at the oblivious boy for what was the third time that week alone. And it was only Tuesday. He was unsuccessfully trying to light the club's Prince on fire with only the power of his mind. Unfortunately, the only ones able to generate flames of any kind seemed to be the fangirls, who were practically salivating at the sight of Tamaki hanging onto Kaoru as if his life depended on it.

Catching his eye, Kaoru gave him a mischievous smile that suggested he had something to do with the other's mutterings of rape and torture. Hikaru smiled back in a way that suggested _he_ wanted the whole story. Right then, preferably. He hesitated a moment when some of the girls leaned in even more at the blond's description of all of the horrible things the dirty old man was sure to do to him if he ever got caught, but in the end stood up from his seat upon deciding his twin was worth the possible savage attack.

"_Kaoru_ , I'm bored. Let's go play," he whined, holding out his hand.

Catching on, his brother gave him an innocent look, "Play what?"

The older twin leaned over and placed his hands on the back of the couch, on both sides of the other's face. He leaned down until their lips were almost touching and whispered, "I think you know which game I'm talking about."

Kaoru looked away in false embarrassment, "Here? With all of these people?"

By now the throng of girls around their lord had drifted their attention to them, and Hikaru resisted the urge to smirk. There was nothing Tamaki hated more than being denied attention.

"Of course not, I'd never share you with anyone else," he said hoarsely, as if he actually did have a problem controlling his forbidden lust for his own brother. He turned to look at the blond boy just as he said it and the girls went wild with fantasies of a three-way yaoi love/hate relationship.

"_Hikaru_ ," Kaoru said in his best uke voice, leaning in until their lips were almost touching.

And then the older boy found himself flat on his ass when Tamaki burst up from his sitting position and pushed him out of the way. Everyone in the club seemed to freeze, wondering if the other's clenched fists and angry breathing meant they should watch out for a swing.

"Daddy," Kyoya's calm voice called out from the silence.

Tamaki's gaze jerked up from his eye-lock with the twin on the floor and he seemed to take in just what he'd done as his entire face filled up with red.

"I...I...You shouldn't do that! It's not proper! Daddy will protect his son from your...your...perverseness!"

With that, he pulled Kaoru up and dragged him out of the doors to the sounds of girls fainting and fingers texting the latest boyxboy gossip to all of the world.

Hikaru's mouth dropped open.

What. The. Hell.

TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI TAMAKI KAORU KAORU TAMAKI

"Uh, my lord, maybe we could slow down? I don't think anyone's following us," Kaoru tried, though he really wasn't surprised when the other ignored him in favor of continuing his insane French mutterings.

"_Tamaki_ ."

"Dirty pervert...worse than the old man...his own brother! Daddy will protect..."

Well, at least he'd switched back to Japanese.

"Tamaki!" he snapped at the other and it finally seemed to sink into the other's head.

"Yes?" the other replied calmly, blue eyes staring at him with an intensity he'd never quite felt before from the other boy. He swallowed harshly.

"'Son'? I thought you were only Haruhi's daddy?" he murmured with a crooked smile.

"Haruhi will always be Daddy's little girl, but she can take care of herself now. Daddy needs to protect his son instead!" he cried, launching himself at Kaoru and giving him a bear hug.

"Daddy will protect your innocent lips from that nasty boy, yes he will. Daddy loves his little Kaoru..." A soft smile came to the redhead's lips as the other trailed off into sudden French.

"Hey, my lord, maybe you should kiss me," he said with a smirk, just as the idea came to him.

Tamaki leapt away as if bitten, his face redder than the roses he handed out so readily to the undeserving fangirls.

"I...I don't know. I mean, you're a boy...and Daddy's son..."

Kaoru frowned. Had he misjudged the situation? Everyone knew what the whole father-daughter relationship really stood for when it came to Haruhi, so he'd just assumed it was the same for him.

Well, he still wanted his kiss regardless.

A devilish smirk came to his face and he walked forwards a little. Tamaki backed up until he hit the wall, his blue eyes as wide as dinner plates.

"Kaoru..."

The redhead leaned towards the other, placing his hands on either side of the blond's head in an identical mimic of his brother's earlier pose.

"You saw what mean Hikaru likes to do to me. One of these days, he's going to steal my first kiss," he said with a sniffle, wiping his eyes as if he actually had tears in them.

It seemed to do the trick since Tamaki's own orbs filled with real tears at the "horrible situation." Before Kaoru could even begin to feel a little bad for using his brother like that (especially since Hikaru _had_ kissed him accidentally before during their skits for the club, thus making his "virgin lips" a moot point) he was pulled into a deep kiss by the other.

They pulled away slowly and Tamaki's eyes instantly dropped to the ground, both boys' faces aflame.

"There, now you're safe," Tamaki mumbled.

Kaoru smirked, "So I am."

Goodness, Tamaki was an idiot.

He was rather fond of him anyway.

**AN: **I just don't know...I feel like something's wrong with this, but when I re-read it, I can't find anything in specific. Maybe it's just because I'm not used to Ouran? Hmm...let me know what you think.

BTW, WHAT COLOR ARE TAMAKI'S EYES?! I've watched & watched & rewatched him in the show & sometimes I think they're a really deep blue & other times a purple. *Scowls at smiling Tamaki face on screen*

**The link to the third part is in my profile. If that doesn't work for some reason, it's on my AO3, search for "To Finalize" by Takeubo_Ishimatsu.**


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